I don’t mourn for celebrities. Even the most sympathetic and heart-wrenching stories rarely speak to me. For Robin Williams, though, my heart is broken.

In part, it is because of Mr. Keating — Williams’ character in “Dead Poets Society” — that I am a teacher. He showed me that teaching can be an avenue for social change. He taught me that the role of a teacher is to challenge convention and conformity. He taught me to encourage students to dream and to do so with laughter and passion.

But I wish he hadn’t left us like this. I wish he had chosen to hold on. I wish he had died delivering the punchline or making one more person’s load in this world just a little bit lighter.

For some, Williams’ suicide is a betrayal. For others, it is selfish. And I understand how they feel. Yet, I think I understand his decision. He simply couldn’t go on with the battle anymore. He chose to surrender.

I forgive him. And I will miss him. And I hope he has found peace at last.

Joshua Hirsch, Denver

This letter was published in the Aug. 17 edition.

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Rest in Peace, Robin Williams. May flights of angels greet you.
And may the Phelps family’s Westboro Baptist bus break down in the desert with the nearest garage 200 miles away, and the nearest part to fix the bus located in Yokohama or Dusseldorf, with the dockworkers and air cargo handlers on strike.

Old_Enough

Oh, jeez, are those jerks going to the funeral?

peterpi

They announced they were.
Where are cops with tire shredding mats when you need them?

ktrav

Well-intended letter but it wasn’t ‘surrender’, either. People need to learn about depression and not see it as weakness…

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. Yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.” – David Foster Wallace

toohip

Depression is a very complex mental disorder, I don’t think any one of us, even as wannabes, can ever possibly understand. The one thing I believe Robin William’s death will bring as a positive, is an awareness of how complex this disease is. Who among all of the celebrities or people of popularity is more loved and more popular than Robin Williams. Can you think of one? I’ve never heard anything really bad said about him. While he leaned progressive, his quotes, (often misquoted or mis-attributed) were more of a conservative common sense bent. He wasn’t a Hollywood liberal. And no argument he was the most insanely hilarious person around. If he didn’t make you laugh at some point, I might suggest you have no humor. And the one thing that people knew him would say, aside from his humor was his kindness and gentleness. wow

So if you have this kind of immense wealth, and this kind of massive popularity and support. . and your clinical depression still overpowered all this to make you want to take your life. . KNOWING how many people you would hurt, anger, feel betrayed with all the kindness you had. . . then we need to start respect this deadly and mysterious disease. Add easy access to firearms for some, and that depression can turn on others.

True some feel betrayed and some feel it was “selfish” because. . “it’s always about us.” Like the stages of grief, the loss of a loved one is always about us, and how it affects us, not them, not other loved ones, not friends and acquaintances. . . just “me.” We just watched an unreleased movie “The Angriest Man in Brooklyn” which was an absolute flop of a movie, but the irony is his character is diagnosed with a brain aneurysm with supposedly hours to live. And of his ironic comments is “my tombstone will read ‘1951-2014.” And he dies in the move, with a moral story of how he drove his family away and they come together for his final days.
He has three more movies to be released, but he left an amazing legacy to be appreciated, and I doubt will ever be equalled. Thank you, for Robin Williams who make us laugh, and cry.

Papa Smurf

I rarely find myself agreeing with you, but this was quite poignant.

Except for “Add easy access to firearms for some, and that depression can turn on others.” That’s just gratuitous politicization to further your pet issue. Any pshrink will tell you that depression almost never manifests itself in acts of violence directed towards others.

toohip

It must of been really difficult for you to (gulp!) “agree” with me, and I understand. :o)
But it may be “gratuitous” but their is a direct connection with your deflection of “it’s people!” e.g., mental illness who are to blame. Well those people have issues, and depression is one of them.

Papa Smurf

What the _ _ _ k are you talking about?

holyreality

Josh, “He taught me that the role of a teacher is to challenge convention and conformity. He taught me to encourage students to dream and to do so with laughter and passion.”

The movie was set in a day when those students are all old or dead by now. Today’s teachers jobs are exactly the opposite of what you wrote. Their job is to quash creativity, punish critical thinking, and to drill a sense of conformity in post-modern children. If a teacher actually DOES instill the qualities you listed, it is in spite of school administration and too visible results of such subversive aims will guarantee denial of tenure.

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